


Remember Me (though i have to say goodbye)

by impravidus



Series: Parkner Week 2020 [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Death from Old Age, Dementia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Old Age, Parkner Week 2020, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25748305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impravidus/pseuds/impravidus
Summary: It had always been a possibility. He just wished it wasn’t his reality.Harley Keener has lived a good, long life. But age is inevitable, and not even he is immune to its detriments.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener/Peter Parker
Series: Parkner Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862851
Comments: 24
Kudos: 70
Collections: Peter Parker





	Remember Me (though i have to say goodbye)

It had always been a possibility. He just wished it wasn’t his reality.

Harley and Peter lived a long, happy life together. Sixty years of marriage, never once straying away from the love of the other. An amazing son, three wonderful grandchildren, and eight beautiful great-grandchildren. Successful long lives following in the footsteps of Tony Stark, Harley as CEO of Stark Industries and Peter as the head of the Avengers. Millions of lives touched by their innovation and good deeds.

They had a good life. They had a happy life. They had a life together.

But, as they grew older, only Harley saw the effects of it.

It started with his eyesight. It had never been the sharpest, thin wired frames balancing on the bridge of his nose as he read at night. But it faded fast, and soon he couldn’t drive anymore, not that he needed to. 

Then it was his hearing. Missing pieces of conversations, not quite following the sound of Peter’s soft tones. With SI’s best hearing aids, he went back to living life with a different sense of normality.

In his old age, he was less limber. His carpal tunnel from his years working in the labs morphing into arthritis, his back pain growing exponentially until it was unbearable. So, he started going to water aerobics and doing yoga twice a day.

Harley was a man who knew how to adapt. He was a man who could overcome any challenge he faced.

But the challenges were getting harder and harder, and even he wasn’t equipped to face them.

It started small. 

Peter had always been the more scatterbrained of the two, but Harley picked up on it too when he was too wrapped up in his mind.

So, when he started misplacing little things, he didn’t think too much of it. The TV remote suddenly disappearing from beside him on the couch cushion and appearing between the pillows he was sitting against. Discovering that the book he had just been reading is in the fridge after he went to grab the jar of pickles. His glasses seemingly teleporting around the house in places he couldn’t remember placing them. It had seemed just like little lapses in memory, probably from his hyperconcentration he often found himself in. He didn’t think too much of it.

Then it was the lapses in time. The repetition that he was unaware he was stuck in. In the shower, he shampooed his hair. When he finished, he shampooed his hair, not realizing he had already shampooed. When he finished, he shampooed his hair, not realizing he had already shampooed. When he finished, he shampooed his hair, not realizing he already shampooed. And then, suddenly, a bottle of shampoo that was once full was now empty. 

When he went to get groceries, he returned to the kitchen, with a counter full of groceries he had already bought, but didn’t recall getting. Then, he went to the bathroom to wash his hands, he remembered he needed to go get groceries. He went to get groceries, and when he returned to the kitchen, the counter was full of groceries he had already bought, but didn’t recall getting. He went to the bathroom…

Then it was forgetting the little things, little things that Peter noticed.

“Ow! Fuck!” Harley had exclaimed.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Peter had asked, concerned.

“I hit my… my…” He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “My… my arm knee. Arm knee. Armkneearmkneearm…”

“Elbow?” Peter corrected.

“Elbow,” Harley confirmed.

Peter looked to him with a worried glance, but didn’t push further.

And later.

“You ready?” Peter asked.

“For what?” Harley replied, confused.

“For Ollie’s birthday call?” 

“It’s Ollie’s birthday?” Harley questioned.

Peter’s smile faded. “Yes. It’s… it’s Ollie’s fifty-fifth.”

Harley’s eyes brightened. “Right! It’s his fifty-fifth. He’s in Italy right now.”

Peter nodded, concern still lingering. “Yeah, he is.”

And later.

“Sweetheart, you can’t put your card there.”

Harley stared at the cards laid out in their game of Kings in the Corner. “Yes, I can.”

“No, you have to go down, not up. So you’d put a five there, not a seven.”

Harley continued to shoot looks between the cards and his husband’s face. “Oh.” He pulled the seven up and placed a five instead.

The little things turned to bigger things, and Harley was feeling lost in his once structured and reliable routine.

Standing in the middle of their garden, he wouldn’t remember how he got there or why he was there, and Peter would find himself running out and guiding him back inside the house, reassuring him that everything was fine.

Sometimes he would forget where he was all together, not recognizing the bright blue walls and sticky heat of their Miami home. He didn’t understand why they weren’t in the city, looking out of his big floor to ceiling windows gazing upon the bright industrial lights.

Sometimes he would look at Peter, and not quite understand what had happened to his husband. Why his eyes had even more crinkles when he smiled and his once soft and smooth hands were wrinkly and his soft brown hair was a fluffy white. 

Sometimes he would look at himself and not recognize his reflection, the man looking back haggard and aged unlike fine wine like his husband. 

It wasn’t until a muggy August evening that he really realized a problem.

Peter had come downstairs in a suit, hair gelled nice, nimble fingers adjusting his cufflinks. When he looked up and saw Harley sitting on the couch in his pajamas, gawking at him in bewilderment, he asked, “why aren’t you dressed?”

“Why  _ are you  _ dressed up?” Harley replied.

“The young innovators award ceremony is tonight. Remember?”

Harley shook his head. “You didn’t tell me about this.”

“Yes, I did. We just talked about it last night.”

Harley huffed in frustration. “No. We didn’t.”

“Well, you should get ready because we have to leave soon.”

“I’m not going to get ready. You can’t just spring this on me last minute and expect me to… to just… just get ready and go!” Harley exclaimed.

“This isn’t last minute, Harley. We’ve been talking about this for weeks!”

“No. We. Haven’t,” Harley insisted.

“Fine. You don’t want to go? Don’t go! I’ll go without you!” Peter said.

“Fine!” Harley yelled back, slumping back onto the couch.

Only after Peter had left for the ceremony did he remember all the conversations they had had prior, excited about the event. Only then did he realize that Peter had a speech.

Things only got worse from there.

One day, Harley spiraled into a panic when he woke up to a silent world, screaming out and only getting a muddle blur of sound. 

Peter ran to his side and clipped in his hearing aids, reminding him that he needed them to hear.

When Peter was on a trip to New York to visit the newest generation of Avengers, Harley didn’t shower for the whole week, losing track of time and not realizing that he hadn’t already.

But, the nail in the coffin was at his eighty fifth birthday, the whole family coming to their home to visit, and the faces blurred together, the shapes and details mashing in his mind and coming blank.

“What is Oliver doing with that woman?” Harley had asked Peter.

“His wife?” Peter questioned, unsure of what he meant.

“No. That woman holding him. Who is she?” Harley stared at the curly haired woman holding the giggling baby.

Peter frowned. “Harley, that’s… that’s not Oliver. That’s Percy. Your great grandson. You know. Adeline’s son? Oliver’s daughter?”

Harley’s brows continued to draw together. “What do you mean?”

“Sweetheart. You know. Oliver. He’s right over there.”

Harley’s gaze drifted over to see a man, salt and pepper hair laughing alongside a dark haired woman he also didn’t recognize. But he saw his eyes. The big, warm brown eyes that he knew so well. Oliver’s eyes. “What… what happened to him?”

“He grew up,” Peter said softly. “Honey, I think you need to see a doctor.”

Harley, eyes welling with tears and throat tight, nodded. “Yeah. I… I think I do.”

Dementia. It was something that ran in Harley’s family, and that he should’ve noticed sooner. But he was stubborn. He didn’t want to believe that his mind was betraying him in that way.

And the good days started to be few and far between.

For the years to follow, Harley spent his days confused. Anxious. Feeling unsafe in a home that wasn’t home with a man he didn’t know.

Peter’s heart broke every time Harley looked at him with the distant, blank stare, thoughts obviously making a blank for the man he saw, desperately trying to piece together pieces that had fallen far from the forefront of his mind. It broke every time he didn’t recognize a piece of his life that had defined it for years. It broke every time he didn’t know the person that he was once was.

It was a good day, well, better day that he looked up from his dinner and said in the firmest voice he could muster, “Peter.”

Peter had looked up, so much hope, so much relief in his eyes, that it made Harley’s words even harder to admit.

“I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

Peter’s smile dissipated. “What?”

“Peter, I don’t want my last days to be living in limbo, unsure and uncertain. I want to be able to go, looking at the face of the man I love, and  _ knowing _ that he is the man that I love.”

Peter bit his quivering lip, unable to look up with the tears spilling from his eyes.

Harley kneeled beside Peter’s chair, despite the ache in his bones. He placed a hand on his cheek. “Hey.  _ Hey. _ It’s gonna be alright. You’re gonna be alright.”

“I don’t know how to live without you.”

Harley rubbed his thumb lightly on his sharp cheekbone. “You’ll find a way. You always do.”

“ _ We _ always do,” Peter said, with a soft sob.

“I love you. I love you so,  _ so  _ much,” Harley whispered.

Peter just cried harder, burying his face into his chest.

It was only a few weeks later when Harley was lying in a cushy, pastel sheeted bed, being visited by all of his family, one by one. It was a good day. It was one of the clearest days he had had in a long time.

The great-grandkids didn’t quite understand what was going on. The grandkids shed some quiet tears for their grandad. But Oliver, he couldn’t contain himself. He lied on the bed with his father, curled up to his side, crying into his chest, telling him the millions of things he knew that he knew, but needed him to know. How loved he was. How he shaped his world. How he could never be the man he was today without his unwavering support. How he taught him the balance between strength and compassion. How he inspired him to seek out the world with curiosity and benevolence. How he loved him so much, and he was the best father he could ever ask for.

And finally, Oliver had to pry himself away to give his other father a moment alone with his husband.

Harley smiled weakly at the brown eyed man, taking his hand in his. “Peter. I can’t quite remember our story. I don’t remember the color of the shirt you wore the moment we first locked eyes. I don’t remember the music that played the first time we danced. I don’t remember the words you said, holding my hands at the altar. But I do remember this. I remember you. I remember your heart, and the way you wished for the world to be kind. I remember the ways you’d smile, proud of every little achievement you made because you treated every win the same, no matter how bigger or small. I remember your laugh, bright and bubbly and beautiful. I also remember the way you’d snort, a disgusting, unattractive honk when you’re caught off guard.”

Harley squeezed his hand. “I remember how much I love you. I remember loving you, loving you so much that I thought my heart would burst from how much it swelled with love. I remember the ways you fit in my arms, like the perfect puzzle piece made for me. I remember the chaste kisses we shared and the ones filled with fire and passion. I remember the love I thought I could never have for anyone else be overcome with even more when we got our beautiful son. And I remember the way I looked at you, knowing what a big bright future we had ahead of us. It was then that I really knew that I never wanted to take on the world without you by my side.”

He swallowed a lump in his throat. “You are the most astonishing man that I have ever met. You are strong, and you use that strength to build goodness, because Peter, you are  _ so good. _ You are a good man. And I know some days you feel like you haven’t done enough, but you have done  _ so _ much. Peter, all you do is give and give and give, and when I’m gone, you need to promise me that you won’t forget to take care of yourself. That you won’t break pieces off of your broken heart to build others up. You need to heal, and you need to give yourself time.

“Because, Peter? I love you. I love you so much, and all I want is the best for you. I don’t want you to stop living just because I do. Make as memories as you can with kids. Keep makin’ your mark on the world. Keep makin’ change. But also remember that you don’t gotta do that right away. Take time to grieve. Take time to feel. Don’t hold it in. Because you’re strong, but you need support. You can’t be strong all the time, and that’s alright. It’s okay to not be okay.”

He pressed a soft kiss to the back of Peter’s knuckles. “You are, and always will be the love of my life. You have and always have been my inspiration. You are astonishing, Peter Parker, and don’t you forget it.”

Harley Keener died surrounded by family and love. 

Harley Keener died remembering that he was loved.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried my best to represent this sort of memory loss to the realest ability, but the only experience I have with things of this nature is my own memory problems and the research I did prior to writing it. I hope I did it justice.
> 
> If you want to chat, my Tumblr is [official-impravidus](https://official-impravidus.tumblr.com/)
> 
> If you want to join a Parkner Discord, click [here!](https://discord.gg/vztSVpg)


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